We know about the folly of the cross. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul says that “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1:18 ). The foolishness continues with the raising of Jesus from the dead. It seems that each year around Lent and Easter books or television shows purporting to prove the absurdity of the Christian faith — and not incidentally making their authors or producers a bundle of money as well — appear on the scene. (See Rachel Zoll’s article, “Easter Prime Marketing Time for Skeptics.”)
I’ve found some rather sad and bitter web pages as well, published by people mocking the Paschal mystery. A self-professed atheist named Ed Kagin writes:
Wouldn’t it have been nice if the risen savior of the world had appeared in all his glory to the Roman Senate where literate rational humanists could have recorded an accurate account of this miracle?”
He seems to think politicians would have been more reliable witnesses than Mary Magdalene.
Are the witnesses credible?
That the first witnesses to the resurrection were women seemed to bother some of the disciples, too. They refused to believe until they had seen Jesus for themselves, perhaps because everybody knew you couldn’t trust the testimony of a woman. Actually, the fact that we are told the women were there is probably an indication of the historicity of the story, because no one trying to concoct a plausible story would have put women in as witnesses. N. T. Wright, in his monumental book called The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003), says:
“If they could have invented stories of fine, upstanding, reliable male witnesses being first at the tomb, they would have done it” (608).
The presence of men would have been considered much more convincing. However, since there is a good chance that the Christian community already knew the women had been there, that’s the way the story had to be told. (Paul, however, does take the easy way out in writing to the Christians of Greek city of Corinth, conveniently neglecting to name the women in the otherwise magnificent fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians.)
No vengeance? No retributive justice?
So we have female witnesses, therefore not credible. And what is perhaps even more conducive to the charge of nonsense, Jesus comes back to the very people who had denied him and deserted him when he was most in need. Back to all of us sinners he comes, with no effort or desire to get even. How foolish can you get, by the standards of worldly wisdom? Why come back to them — to us — at all? Shouldn’t the risen Christ have declared victory accompanied by invading troops of angels? Shouldn’t he at least have demanded an apology?
Christianity’s Reason for Existing
Why did Christianity arise, and why did it take the shape it did? The early Christians themselves reply: We exist because of Jesus’ resurrection. … There is no evidence for a form of early Christianity in which the resurrection was not a central belief. Nor was this belief, as it were, bolted on to Christianity at the edge. It was the central driving force, informing the whole movement.
- N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is
It is this folly of the cross and resurrection that makes us who we are and calls us into the very life of the resurrected Christ. For as Paul says, “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:21).
‘They refused to believe until they had seen Jesus for themselves, perhaps because everybody knew you couldn’t trust the testimony of a woman. ‘
JOHN 4: 39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.”
‘There is no evidence for a form of early Christianity in which the resurrection was not a central belief.’
1 Corinthians 15:12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
1 Corinthians 15:45 ‘ “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit’
Response to Steven Carr
1. “The testimony of a woman”: The ancient Jewish historian Josephus (37 – sometime after 100 CE) wrote that “the testimony of women is not accepted as valid because of the lightheadedness and brashness of the female sex.”
Obviously, this did not mean that no one ever believed what a woman had to say. For accuracy’s sake, however, let us note that the people you are quoting in John 4 were Samaritans. The Jews, though, were certainly not alone in their view of women. Indeed, we could cite evidence that ancient Jewish women were better off than woman in many other cultures.
2. On 1 Corinthians 15: The existence of individuals — “some of you,” as Paul says — who denied the resurrection of the dead does not mean that the resurrection was not a central tenet! However, Corinth was a city of religious syncretism, and we don’t know just what those Corinthians were claiming. It is possible that they held the common Greek belief that only the soul lived on after death. In any case, the resurrection of Jesus, as N. T. Wright points out, brought Christianity into being.
To our readers: Steven Carr is the owner of a web site called, “The UK’s Leading Atheist Page.”